CBRE to Buy Onnec for £460 Million in Cash, Stock Rises 2.65%

CBRE said on October 20 that it will acquire Onnec, a London-based provider of data center infrastructure services. The initial purchase price is £460 million in cash, which CBRE put at about $610 million and The Motley Fool at $613 million. The parties also agreed to a multi-year earnout of up to £300 million (about $400 million), which The Motley Fool reported is payable if Onnec meets certain growth milestones that were not specified.

Onnec was founded in 1986 and, according to CBRE's release, designs, deploys and maintains data center infrastructure. It has about 800 full-time employees and serves hyperscalers in the United Kingdom, Continental Europe and Asia Pacific. CBRE expects Onnec to generate approximately £370 million in revenue and more than £50 million of core EBITDA in 2027. CBRE described the transaction as expected to be immediately accretive to its core earnings per share.

The strategic logic is a push into infrastructure services. CBRE's chief operating officer Vikram Kohli said the company is pursuing an explicit strategy to build a global infrastructure services business to complement its real estate services business. This is a services business rather than a purchase of physical assets, and CBRE said it expects the infrastructure services line to generate nearly $4.5 billion of total revenue in 2027. The Motley Fool's author argued that investors were most excited about CBRE's push into the data center market.

CBRE shares closed up $3.46, or 2.65%, at $134.23 on October 20. The deal is subject to customary regulatory approvals and is expected to be completed around the end of the year. Investors may watch for approval progress, how the earnout milestones are defined once more detail is disclosed, and whether Onnec's 2027 revenue and EBITDA expectations hold.